Hydroid rides high by going deep

Increasing demand for the Pocasset company's underwater vehicles leads to major growth.

By ROBERT GOLD

capecodtimes.com

By ROBERT GOLD

Posted Jul. 2, 2013 at 2:00 AM

By ROBERT GOLD
Posted Jul. 2, 2013 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

POCASSET — Next summer, Hydroid expects to move into a new facility, which was intended to replace the company's rented facilities.

There's a complication, though: The new, 40,000-square-foot space won't be enough for Hydroid, which is in the midst of a boom that has brought large increases in revenue in recent years. To meet demand, the company is increasing its staff by almost 60 percent this year.

"We outgrew the building even before it was built," said Duane Fotheringham, Hydroid's vice president of operations.

The Pocasset company, which builds autonomous underwater vehicles, had 84 employees at the end of last year. Since then, the company has added 30 positions, and plans to hire about 20 more people by the end of this year, human resources manager Mary Lou Regan said.

The open positions at the company — a subsidiary of Kongsberg Maritime of Norway — cover a wide range of professions, including accountants, software engineers, program managers, electronic engineering technicians and sales staff.

The company also hopes to hire its first ever director of research and development, Fotheringham said.

With its growing staff, one focus has been integrating people into Hydroid's methods and corporate culture, Fotheringham said. The company has started a new, multi-day training program this year that includes taking new staff out on the water to see one of Hydroid's vehicles.

The challenge has been finding enough qualified people to fill the positions, which are often highly technical, he said.

The company has tapped into the military, defense and oceanographic industries to fill some of the jobs, but others require specialized skills, he said.

The company needs the extra staff to keep up with its increase in business. Since 2010, its revenue has increase year-over-year by at least 33 percent, he said.

The company sells its vehicles to a variety of customers, including the military, governments, marine research organizations, fishery operations and energy companies. The devices are used in a wide variety of roles, including scientific sampling, debris mapping, hydrographic surveys and salvage operations.

Hydroid sell three versions of its underwater vehicle — the REMUS 100, 600 and 6000 — which each have a different operating depth. The number refers to the maximum operating depth, measured in meters.

In recent years, Hydroid's vehicles have been involved in some high-profile work.

In April 2011, three REMUS 6000s, used by a team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, found Air France Flight 447 more than two miles deep in the Atlantic Ocean. The airliner crashed about 350 miles off the coast of Brazil on June 1, 2008, killing all 228 passengers and crew.

The same year, a REMUS 100, being used for climate research in mapping the sea floor of a remote fjord in the Svalbard Islands in the Arctic, came across the wreckage of a helicopter that crashed in 2003.

The company's growth hasn't been attributed to any one customer or contract.

"It's the continued acceptance of the technology," he said.

Hydroid's new facility will include a testing tank and a pressurized water chamber. The building will house the company's entire manufacturing, testing, customer service and engineering sections. Other staff, such as finance, marketing and sales employees, will remain in some of the current space.

Until then, the growing staff will continue operating out of four separate buildings. The company now has about 30,000 square feet of rented space and will keep renting facilities totaling 5,000 to 10,000 square feet after the new building is completed.